15 Video Game Movies and TV Shows That Don’t Quite Suck
Released this week is Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg’s adaptation of the Uncharted video game series, based on Indiana Jones with a modern young protagonist. This is one of my favorite game franchises, which does not guarantee that I will like the film. Films and shows based on video games have a deservedly dubious reputation; Rotten Tomatoes isn’t everything, but with a few exceptions, their review scores tend to peak somewhere in the 50% range. ( Uncharted is currently at a steep 42% .)
I don’t want to be dismissive, but there’s no doubt about what we’re judging on the curve for making a list of the “best” video game movies – we have a tendency to describe particularly well-made video games as “cinematic,” which suggests that the medium’s highest goal should be to about evolving to become as movie-like as possible. This is stupid: they are very different things, and what works for one often does not work for another. As a result, some of the simplest game adaptations fail by trying too hard to replicate the source material. Some of the best are ports of fighting games that know exactly what they’re about. The Street Fighter adaptation probably won’t win many Oscars, but if done right, it could be perfect entertainment. All of these particular adaptations work as perfectly watchable entertainment, albeit for very different reasons.